Category Christianity

Sep 9 2010

The Hurva Synagogue

Last week I was in the old city and I went past the famous Hurva Synagogue.

This building was rebuilt and finished in March 2010.   I wanted to go inside, but its only open to the public in the mornings with a groups with a guide.

Following the destruction of this building in the 1948, initial plans for this current synagogue were drawn up in 2000 but the building was not finished until this year in March, about the same week I arrived to do my second season of volunteer work here.   Looking at pictures of the previous synagogue (its been destroyed and rebuilt quite a few times now)  it looks a pretty close copy of the original.

There was a lot worry from possible attacks from Arabs thinking that this a starting point towards building the third temple.   Frequent amounts of history revisionism tries to hide a lot of what has been in this country from the past.  You can click on this photo of a plaque to see this closer.   I think this is a nice icon of the determination of the Jewish people to protect their capital.

Sep 9 2010

Burning of Korans. Yeah smart plan from some Christians….

In the news, some Christians from Florida want to burn Korans as a way of remembering 9 years since the 9/11 attacks.

The guy in question is called Terry Jones who has set up International burn a Koran day.   I was thinking is this a reuniting of Monty Python doing some Islam themed sketch?   Alas not.

Really would this be something that Jesus would approve of?   Are Muslims, even the secular ones or those disillusioned with an Islamic upbringing going to turn around and say, good job chaps, I will think I will give my prayer mat and Arab tunic to local cat shelter charity shop and do something different?

This act is just dangerously provocative and will encourage responses from Muslims that could lead to people killed or property destroyed.  Probably those that Christians living in already hostile parts of the world.

I would welcome it if a case where a whole town came to Jesus and burned books from a Satanic cult they belonged to.   Indeed I have seen non-nutter Christian do burning of occultic, pornographic or other material, this is more of a personal decision to get rid of material from a previous destructive lifestyle, and make a statement in doing something new, embracing Jesus as their saviour.

You often see militants in Arab nations on TV burning flags of the US, Israel, or more recently Denmark because of the cartoon fiasco, I also remember when I was young people outside WH Smith burning copies of a book written by Salman Rushdie, as well as burning of books (not just religious and political) by the Nazis.   Attempting to imitate this practice just seems childish and pointless.  I hope Terry Jones can live with himself if Christians are persecuted as part of a revenge act.

Please pray that this will not cause revenge attacks and that this gathering of Christians doing some unhelpful will be called off, and that Muslim people will turn away from Islam and find Jesus.

Sep 8 2010

Galilee road trip part 3 : Miracles of Jesus on location

Parts 1 – 2 – 3 – more soon…

Back to continue the camping trip I did in the Galilee in May.  The towns surrounding this lake are where Jesus spent most of his ministry.

With the aid of a few supplies we took on our expedition, I decided to do some photos to recreate some of the miracles the Lord did on this very place.

Water into Wine.   As mentioned in John 2 : 9.  Jesus did this at a wedding in Cana which is a town some distance away from the west side of the sea, although I am the east side.

The sea and the coast can look quite foggy at times. The places where we camped has this amazing view, this wall is great to sit on and view until the sun goes down.

Five loaves and two fishes.  I have used some tinned pilchards, as I think using fresh fish in a car with 5 people and loaded with other stuff on a hot day would not be very a popular.

The scriptures here mention this was done by Jesus in a place called Gennesaret on the north west of the sea.  Check Matthew 14.

This sign is famous for its comedy value, I saw this is a park in a far up north part of Israel.  Some of my friends said they had seen this in national parks in other parts of the country.

The middle symbol looks like its saying ‘No walking on water’!

Parts 1 – 2 – 3 – more soon…

Sep 2 2010

In Sepia: Holyland pictures collection part 2

Part 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7

more pictures as promised…

These are a little smaller as done with my old camera and some contain multiple shots stitched together.

These houses seen from the walls of the old city with mauve colours and curved walls show you can mix and match different styles, ie: the familiar white stones used on all Jerusalem buildings and a bit of art deco. 🙂

Cafe in Hillel Street, with Italian museum overlooking.

Mosque in old city only a few metres away from the dome of the rock entrance.

Apartments and mosaic on wall.

Part 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7

Sep 2 2010

‘fake’ Christians

Seen this article in the news lately.

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/08/27/almost.christian/index.html

I think its deeply wrong to label anyone as a fake Christian, and certainly there is often cases were people make hurtful assumptions which may or may not be true.  Here in Jerusalem, I know of Jews and Arabs that are believers in Jesus but often in secret because of being put in danger or being cut off by their families and communities or in more extreme cases with Arab believers, killed.  Often as Christians we avoid sharing our faith with non-believing friends, neighbours and work colleagues because of fear of ridicule or rejection.   This is something I had struggled with for a while, this is something that got easier over time, through encouragement from other people and just getting older and wiser.

There is confusion over what defines a Christian.  Often people may label themselves as Christians because of:

1/ They were brought up that way, 2/ They come from a country which this is assumed to be the ‘default’ faith is part of their identity, 3/Once went to church or sunday school, or went to an educational establishment affiliated with a church, 4/ Got baptised as a child.

I personally think that a true Christian:-

1/ Has made a personal decision to accept Jesus as their Lord and Saviour, 2/ goes to a church regularly, 3/ lives a life of integrity to try and follow the examples of Jesus.

Fallen away.   Often I hear of people who are or were Christians but no longer have a current relationship with God.   This can happen by circumstances such as a relationship with a non-believer, a weekend work schedule that means no longer regularly attending a church, sadness or disappointment over a loss like bereavement or relationship that has ended.   I think its important for us as Christians who know people like to keep in touch with those who may be absent from church, not to be forceful in telling them to come back, more to be a friend to those, and demonstrate through our actions that they are missing out on the love of Jesus.

Just like someone told me, just because you go to a church it doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.

The media especially the BBC loves to show Christians as being frumpy, old fashioned and irrelevant.   A particular case I can think of is a group of Christian teenagers being asked questions about sex, explained how they had a different attitude that what conventional thinking would be of that of their peers in school and college, you could tell the presenters of the program thought they were boring and prudish.

The scriptures do warn us against being ‘luke warm’ (Revelation 3 : 16) and real Christians are obliged to meet together and have fellowship and be accountable (Hebrews 10 : 25) as sin is inevitably going to happen in our lives.

I think articles like this are far from being helpful or a true picture of Christians, but as true believers we should aim to show Christ through our actions and words.

Sep 1 2010

IT work in Jerusalem in August

This week work has been busy.

Fans.  Cooling fans in PCs in hot countries wear out a lot.  I changed one on my manager’s PC, the blades simply get stuck and won’t turn.  It seems the oil in the motor bearings gets gunged up and simply won’t turn any more.   I must of changed 15+ fans on PCs in the last year, on the CPU, power supply, chassis, video cards and one laptop as well.  Most of the time this is a off the shelf part and cheap and easy to replace bit.  In one case a fan on a motherboard chipset was a weird one and the only place I could get one (£7) was off ebay.  Well it seemed a shame to throw away an otherwise working motherboard, this fan came all the way from China and took 2 weeks to get here.  I swapped over the user with another PC straight away, so when this part arrived the PC was sitting on a bench to be fixed and then could be put back into a service for a new member of staff a month later.   Now the fan on my own office PC has packed in, so I will need to get another.  Normally they start making grinding noises, but this one has just stopped altogether.

I am making plans to virtualise a server used for our finance applications, as it seems quite awkward to manage it, and I have a feeling one of the hard disks in the RAID array is failing, so this will be done as an out of hours job, hopefully if everything goes to plan I only need 30 minutes in the office, the rest I can do by remote software from a coffee shop with laptop and wireless, the real pain with this kind of upgrade is waiting,  a trial run of this type of upgrade took 6 hours to copy files using Norton Ghost from the server to an extra hard disk.   Strip out all the hanging around and the job shouldn’t take more than one hour.

I got to go out and hand over one of the older computers I wrote on not long ago to a local family just a mile or so from our headquarters.

The girls seem to be pleased with their new acquisition.  After this, I got to spend the rest of the afternoon helping our Korean colleague Jey with his deliveries to the poor from the food bank.   Driving to various apartments of needy families with food was interesting as this took us over the north part of Jerusalem through a nice forest and places I have not seen before. Jey walks quite fast between the van and the apartments as he has to do a lot of drops and time is quite tight.

At least 3 of the people we visited were elderly holocaust survivors, a few having some full time carers staying with them who usually of Thai or Filipino origin who I see quite a lot in caring and nursing roles here.   One of the older gents who was 82 and originally from Poland invited us in and offered orange juice and cake and told us jokes and told us stories about he used to sing in his synagogue when he was younger.  This was a nice afternoon out of the office.

Aug 27 2010

Futurliner rare bus/truck used by US Christian ministry

As I like old cars and I service equipment and resources for Christian organisations, this article today I thought was interesting, an unusual bus owned by evangelist Oral Roberts for a travelling ministry.

http://www.futurliner.org/oralroberts.htm

Far from being an extravagance which some famous TV preachers have been accused of in the past, this type of transport make sense as a mobile office and somewhere to sleep for anyone working on the road, just like actors on a remote movie set or funfair or circus operators.

This site also shows restoration of these rare beasts.   I particularly like the high up aircraft cockpit driving position, I wonder how practical it is for every driving.  I have never seen these before, I guess they are a reminder when the American automotive industry was a world away from the depressing 201xs and at its very peak during the 1950s and higher price exotic vehicles with brands like Cadillac were booming.  I am assuming these bespoke vehicles built to to the customer’s own specification.  I guess that why the Wiki article on this unusual ultra rare behemoth camper shows only 12 produced and one sold recently for a cool $4m.

Aug 25 2010

In Sepia: Holyland pictures collection part 1

Part 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7

I sometimes pretend to be creative.   Here are some pictures I have done of various parts of the holyland, I have dressed up a bit with sepia and some extra effects.  These are you to enjoy, download them, use them as backdrop for your computer or for any private purposes.

I have listed four today.   A few more will be regularly posted every now and then, so keep this site in your browser favourites.

If you wish to have copies without the branding for private or commercial use, you may do so, please contact me, I would like to ask for a donation as I am volunteering for a charity.  Note, don’t just nab them and use them commercially or cut the edges off, if you do, I reserve the right to expose and make fun of you.   So there. 🙂

Seriously though, a financial gift of some kind would go a long way to help me here as I do volunteer IT work here in Jerusalem.   I am looking at the possibly of after coming home for Christmas, of coming back from January to April-ish.   For this I need to raise at least £500 for flights and health insurance.   Any ideas for fund raising would be greatly appreciated.

Part 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7

Aug 23 2010

praying with a genuine heart or as a Pharisee

Read something interesting this week that asks Christians who are critical of Obama’s administration.  It may be about the Middle East conflict, the NY mosque or overhaul of the US healthcare system.

Obama has been rumoured to have Muslim background, as there is some uncertainty over his background and if he is even a US citizen or not.  To be honest I have seen all kinds of people in the media, even some of the British Royal family taking interest in Islam.

As a Christian I think this is more to do with a spiritual darkness that is blinding people from the true Messiah Jesus.

This week I read this very challenging article really drives it home if as Christians we are praying for our leaders who just wanting to be Pharisees wanting something to moan about.   The point about seeing  a wicked politician like Yasser Arafat changed really quite moved me.

http://www.ministrytodaymag.com/index.php/evangelical-essentials/18387-mind-your-prayer-language

In times of the bible, things happened to leaders of nations that changed their hearts, look at at Persian leader Cyrus the Great who took pity on the Jews, see Ezra 1 in the Bible.

I think our modern day leaders can easily change from good to bad or vice versa, for that reason prayer is needed for them whatever circumstances there could be.

Aug 20 2010

Jerusalem Beer festival

Wasn’t planning to go to this initially, but saw it on my way home from church worship event on thursday night, so I thought why not. 🙂

I was going to go to the beer event last year but after queueing for an hour, the gates were locked and they wouldn’t let us in.   Something to do with a legal issue about serving alcohol which the government people were discussing with the event organisers.   We ended going a usual local instead.

This time the event was in the old Jerusalem railway station, behind the Lab bar.

Not a bad event, but I didn’t get to see any live bands as I was there about 10.30pm and I guess they had stopped playing.   There were very long waits at the bars, and even waiting at the largest one for 10 minutes, I almost got bored of waiting.  Something to do with lack of normal queueing, instead requires a bit of assertiveness and force to get the barman’s attention.

All the beers offered and promoted at this event were all European brands.   Its a shame there wasn’t Goldstar or Macabee there but I guess this was an event for local Israelis rather foreigners who wanted to try something else other than the familiar Israeli beer.  There were quite a few tshirt shops and craft stands.

Good to see none of this ‘my <low_volume_ale_with_daft_name> is better than your <mass_produced_beer_with_big_marketing_campaign>’ snobbery nonsense, there was all kinds of booze offered including some special Israeli vodka I had not seen before.

This maybe down to some good security and police outside, but compared to how an event like this would probably turn out in the UK, I think I only spotted one person you can say had ‘over done it’  a little.

I like the fact that Israelis are neither prude not excessive, and this was a good party event I think, that shows the fun side of this place and the outgoing nature of most Israelis.